Socialist Book Report: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels

As the name implies, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State [year], Friedrich Engels attempts to build an understanding of how the family, divisions of class, gender, and the modern nation-state evolved over time. At first glance, it’s simply an anthropological and sociological text about ancient and indigenous cultures. But on a deeper level it shows how economic factors have an outsized influence on how society is organized.

Some people will tell you that things like the nuclear family, “traditional” gender roles, and capitalism are natural and have always existed, but if we look back only a few hundred years, we see many societies around the world that were organized very differently. Engels started his study with the book Ancient Society [year] by Lewis H. Morgan, an American lawyer who represented the Seneca nation of New York, who are part of a larger confederacy called the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois.

He {Morgan or Engels?} found that the Haudenosaunee shared striking similarities with other indigenous cultures around the world, and with the early histories of cultures in Europe such as the Greeks, Romans, and Germans.
Using the Marxist philosophy of historical materialism, Engels built on Morgan’s work to show that most societies passed through the similar stages of development between hunter-gatherer tribes, settled agriculture, and ultimately modern capitalism.  Most importantly, he showed that the dominant economic mode of production and distribution is enormously impactful on society as a whole, especially on property relations, government and laws, and even family structures.  These societal structures tend to reinforce and strengthen the underlying economic systems, until some change forces a rupture, and a new system takes its place.

Going all the way back to the beginning, the earliest bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers owned {word choice} nothing beyond what they could carry on their backs, and had to rely on scarce and sporadic sources of food.  In these conditions, cooperation and sharing were necessary for survival.  This spirit of sharing extended to childcare, which was often communal -- and even romantic relationships, where polyamory and plural marriage tended to be more common than they are today. Because strict monogamy was almost unheard of, families tended to be matrilineal, since you can be sure of who a child’s mother is.  Morgan observed how extended families formed into matrilineal clans among the Haudenosaunee, and called them gentes (singular: gens), after a similar Roman family structure.

Over time, technologies like fishing, fire, the bow and arrow, and horticulture {word choice} (farming) allowed people to settle in villages, and this stage of development is where Morgan found the Haudenosaunee.  It was through the gens that land was owned in common, labor was organized, food and other goods were distributed, inheritance was passed on, and laws were administered. There was very little division of labor into separate job roles, and hardly ever would a leader inherit their office from a parent.  The Haudenosaunee had organized themselves into a representative democracy based on clans or gentes that ultimately came to include six related nations, but they didn’t have anything that we would call a state in the modern sense.  At this stage they had no use for taxes, standing armies, or private property, which is why Engels called this type of society “primitive communism.” Despite what the anarcho-primitivists might say, we can’t actually go back to this type of society by destroying modern technology. {too declarative, where’s you evidence or argument?}

Engels next shifts his focus onto Ancient Greece, specifically Athens, which developed along a similar path during its prehistory.  By the time that written language was introduced to Greece, the old structures of the gens was starting to unravel due to changing economic conditions. As technologies like metal axes and plows were invented, more land could be cleared and cultivated than before.  The domestication of animals allowed for a more calorie-dense diet with less manpower.  This surplus of food demanded more organization, and technologies like written language and mathematics were invented to keep track of who owed what to whom.

At this stage, some men, probably the elected leaders of their gentes, decided that it was important to pass down their valuable farmland and herds of animals to their sons, and suddenly strict monogamy for women became important, so that men could be sure that their heirs are legitimate.  Of course men were still free to have multiple wives, or even take female slaves as concubines.  At this point the gentes still existed, but we see them change from matrilineal to patrilineal ways of reckoning relations.

Where before a prisoner of war was just another mouth to feed, at this time it made economic sense to conquer and enslave neighboring tribes.  Suddenly, land was worth fighting for, and the collective property of the gens started to be divided up by households.  Free citizens found it increasingly difficult to compete with slave labor, and found that after a bad harvest they might have to mortgage or sell their land to a wealthier landowner.  At best they would end up as a sharecropper or landless peasant; at worst they might be sold into slavery to cover their debts.

So we see how the emergence of private property lead to class stratification.  At this time we also see the beginning of the division of labor, with specialized farmers and artisans making commodities specifically as commercial trade goods to sell, rather than for use in their own households or communities.  Thus people came to be divided into classes based on their relations to the means of production, with an emergent class of aristocrats controlling the bulk of the government and land. At its peak, Athens had about 90,000 citizens, 365,000 slaves, and 45,000 free non-citizens.  There still was a form of democracy, but only for a shrinking number of male citizens.  As Athens transformed fully into a slave society, the old rules based on the gens became less and less relevant.  Trade and commerce incentivized many of people to move away from their home villages, disconnecting them from their mother gens.

These changes lead to the emergence of a centralized government that ruled based on divisions of geography rather than family.  The gentes lost all political relevance, and stayed around merely as social and religious organizations.  A state apparatus emerged to collect taxes, maintain a police force, and raise a standing army for the conquest of their neighbors.  But the contradictions inherent in such a top-heavy and expansionist empire ultimately lead to the downfall of Athens.

Engels goes on to cite other examples from history that chart the transition from the Roman Empire to medieval feudalism, and from feudalism into modern capitalism, but we don’t have the space for that here, so you’ll have to read the book yourself for the full story.

So how does this apply to us today?  My take-away is that human nature is a multi-faceted thing, that throughout history humans have organized themselves into various types of societies, and we can consciously work towards creating a society that is more equal, democratic, and free.

I want to leave you with a hopeful vision of how socialism has transformed and will transform society for the better, and how economic liberation leads to more freedom for everyone.  Socialized medicine means that you don’t have to stay in a shitty job just for the health insurance.  Socialized housing means that you don’t have to stay in a shitty relationship just to keep a roof over your head.  Socialized childcare means that no one has to put their career on pause in order to start a family.  And the abolition of private property means an end to divisions of class, and the coersive[sp.] power of the bourgeoisie.

I also hope that I’ve inspired you to read and study Origin of the Family or any of the other foundational Marxist texts, to gain a better understanding of how the capitalist mode of production impacts our daily lives. Most of those texts are free and in the public domain, and may[del.] can be found in e-book formats at marxists.org, or as audiobooks at librivox.org.